


hiraeth

by perennials



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, there's like 5 minutes of kissing and one (1) open fly pls don't expect full blown porn thx, theyre legal i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7358767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are a lighthouse and I am lost at sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

> i had [this one song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kPXH9HJvE) on loop whenever i opened up my google doc to write, idk, just a thought. it's a cool song  
> also it's implied that they do Things but i didn't actually go into any Thing Doing because i'm not sufficiently equipped with enough technical knowledge. the m rating's just to be safe, in case, u know, other tiny people come snooping around (like me) (tiny people go away) (leave)

**there is a rainstorm in your eyes**

 

The boy with dove-white hair slips in with the monsoon season, less person than shadow, more rain than shine.

 

Tumbling across a sea of fissured concrete, his elbows catch on sharp turns and rugged corners, blooming deep violet down train-tracks and across two a.m. streets. The town is quiet, soft as a sigh, and he makes it just a fraction of a kilometer past the unlit McDonald's at the end of Main Street before his knees buckle under his weight and the allure of cold, wet concrete becomes too much to resist.

 

Rivulets of clear blue and wine red are streaming down his face when Gon finds him in a crumpled heap under the gnarly old palm tree that sidles up to his fourth-floor windows. The wind howls all around, but he himself is deathly quiet. His eyes are closed, raindrops crystallizing on lashes strung with moonshine; breathing comes quick and uneven.

 

Without meaning to (at all) Gon remembers small, balled-up bodies and tiny, balled-up fists, glassy eyes, a funeral attended by a sole, grieving passer-by. Swallowing roughly, he scoops the boy up like he’s made of nothing but fairy dust and glitter (though he is actually the taller of the two), shields his form from the rain as much as he can as he ducks under the covered roof and steps into the elevator.

 

By the time he's set the boy down on the sofa in the living room Gon’s clothes are soaked through with a myriad of burnt-out reds and oranges.

 

"Hang on, okay?" Gon folds his limbs together carefully.

 

Returning a second later with a first aid kit, he cleans and wraps every cut and scrape with far more finesse than any person his age should possess. It’s a meticulous, careful process, with Gon tip-toeing around every injury whose extent he is not sure of, but it’s done with in a matter of minutes all the same.

 

The boy groans softly.

 

"Hi, I'm Gon," Gon says when his eyes flutter open.

 

The stranger draped in swan white blinks a couple of times, confusion swirling in pond water-blue irises. "Where the fuck am I?"

 

"My place."

 

He turns to look at Gon, expression ironed flat and unreadable. “You're not going to murder me in my sleep, are you?"

 

"It would be a sin to kill someone as beautiful as you," Gon reassures him in a half-joking manner.

 

The compliment sails cleanly over the top of the boy's head. "I'm Killua, by the way."

 

"That's a nice name."

 

Killua (it really is a lovely name, Gon thinks) sweeps his gaze across his surroundings. "This isn't a very nice apartment."

 

Gon chuckles good-naturedly.

 

And the rain hammers on.

  
  


**but no one can breathe underwater**

 

When Gon is five he finds a pigeon in the uniform trimming of grass that encircles the outside of his narrow apartment complex.

 

Though young and hopeful and not yet exposed to the darker truths of the world Gon knows something is wrong almost immediately: pigeons are by nature jocund, lively creatures that cough out shrill chirps as easily as cereal into a bowl, prone to flying rather unintentionally into telephone poles and taking happy little shits on the heads of unsuspecting passers-by.

 

In contrast, this one is shredded like a wilted flower, wrought dry like parchment and wrinkled up raisins. One wing is broken and the other, clipped short. It's folded in on itself like an origami crane, but paper wings will carry you nowhere, and even the pigeon seems to be aware of this, to some extent.

 

So he takes the small, fragile thing home. Feeds it grains and berries and whatever he can scavenge from the fridge when Mito-san’s not looking, holds it like a delicate glass sculpture in his tiny, tiny palms, tells it about the color of the sky (cotton-candy blue) and the smell of blueberry pancakes wafting in through the open doorway.

 

Then the rains pick up again, and maybe it’s the abrupt drop in temperature, or perhaps the pigeon had simply given up a long time ago where a tender five year-old’s heart had not, because one morning when Gon prods at the feathered lump in the center of its makeshift nest (constructed lovingly from tissue paper and errant twigs), it doesn’t stir awake like it should.

 

Later, Mito-san pats him on the head and tells him: “it’s not your fault.”

 

 _She's lying_ , he thinks, _she's lying._

  
  


**and i am hiding with the other button-eyed children**

 

Killua is eternally grateful towards Gon for picking him off the side of the road and treating his wounds and letting him spend the night (curled up on the sofa with an extra blanket snug around his shoulders)— he really is. But his injuries aren't half as bad as Gon claims they are, all surface scratches and bruises broken just under the skin, he wouldn't want to intrude on him for any longer than was absolutely necessary, and that time slot of essence has already expired. Or, at the very least, this is what he tells Gon in the morning while he throws together sandwiches at the counter across from the living room space and Killua’s elbow protests hotly when he tries to prop himself up far enough to put forth a reasonable, convincing case.

 

"Nope," Gon objects simply. "You winced just now, didn't you? Stay for a while, at least until your injuries heal." The droll pitter-patter of rain outside masks the groan that slips out in reply.

 

Killua flops backwards onto the sofa arm with a sigh. "This is kidnapping," he declares.

 

"Even if it were—which it is _not_ , by the way— who'd you call for help? I have a feeling you're the sort that travels alone," Gon replies cheerily.

 

"Is that a threat?"

 

"...'Course not."

 

"I don't believe you."

 

"That's understandable. We've just met, after all."

 

Killua spends the rest of the morning grumbling into the blocky, overstuffed cushions piled high on the sofa, watching the skies meld from liquid azure to cement-gray with a sullen moue on his face. Arguably enough he _could_ probably claw and bite his way out of this... _unfavorable situation_ if he put his mind to it, but he has a feeling Gon is even more stubborn than he is, and of energy and strength he admits to having a slight shortage of.

 

This continues on until Gon pads over with tuna mayo sandwiches stacked neatly on a polished platter. Killua's stomach grumbles traitorously.

 

"You got anything sweet?" Though his tone is petulant and childishly demanding, Killua extends a gesture of reluctant amiability in favor of getting breakfast.

 

Easy laughter bubbles out of Gon's mouth as he sets the plate down on the rickety coffee table next to the sofa.

 

"Do you like hot chocolate?"

  
  


**buried in wastelands of glitter and dust**

 

"I love hot chocolate, actually. And cold chocolate, and frozen chocolate, and all things chocolate in general." It's not really necessary to vocalize this ‘truth’ now, seeing how the one it concerns is sat surrounded by empty chocolate sundae cups and just about to stab his spoon into a fifth. Still, Killua feels obligated to inform his companion of this obvious fact, and delights in the unabashedly horrified look it elicits from him. Having spent the last couple of months living in back-end motels and walking with his gaze cutting deep into the sidewalk, the small reliefs of being able to bounce snarky remarks and quick retorts off another are something he’d almost forgotten about.

 

Watching lone men and women with bowed heads and flocks of rambunctious teenagers rotate in and out of the revolving doors by the entrance, the thought suddenly occurs to him that they've been here for an incredibly long time. The blinking numbers on the rectangular clock embedded in the wall read eight… eight _something_ , except Killua can’t see the other half thanks to the _terribly inconvenient_ seating arrangement, so he stands up in his seat and leans over Gon’s part of the table, shoulder bumping unevenly into the other's, props his elbows up beside the awaiting chocolate milkshake, and squints harder.

 

"What the hell, it's eight forty-nine." He snorts incredulously. "When did we...?"

 

Killua's current position has granted Gon unexpected access to the twisting length of his torso, and the latter pokes him offhandedly in the side as he muses aloud, "between the four Saturday Special chocolate sundaes, two chocolate milkshakes, and _generously large_ slice of chocolate cake you've inhaled, I'm really not surprised."

 

The unexpected contact makes Killua flinch, but he masks it with a quick scowl. "You said I could get whatever I wanted," he mutters defensively, turning to flick Gon in the forehead.

 

"What are you, a kid?" Gon is laughing, again. He's always laughing.

 

Laughter must be contagious, Killua decides, because he can feel his cheeks stretching into a smile. "Aren't you the one who's still a _teenager_? It's term break now, isn't it? When do you have to go back to school?"

 

"Piss off! I'm starting university classes in August."

 

"Oho?" Returning to his seat, Killua steeples his hands and props his chin on his fingers.

 

"Yes." Scrunching his brow pointedly, Gon reaches across and snatches the half-finished chocolate sundae away from Killua. He takes a large scoop of ice cream and chocolate sauce and shoves the whole thing unceremoniously into his mouth.

 

"Oi, that's mine," Killua protests lightly, but Gon merely sticks his tongue out at him through a mouthful of chocolate.

 

"This stuff is so _sweet_ , how can you stomach any of it?" Despite his complaints, he proceeds to lick the spoon clean, from the tip of the dainty metal thing to its round, curved base, tongue darting out from between chocolate-stained lips to dip into the concave inside, lips pursing around the juncture where thin, crafted shoulders meet the thicker, wider drop. He lets go with a wet pop of his lips, smiling widely (or is that a smirk Killua sees at the corner of his mouth? He can't really tell, not with the way his vision is blurring like out of focus camera lens).

 

He snaps out of his trance-like state when Gon hands the spoon back to him, fingers curled casually around the handle.

 

"Here, now it's clean again."

 

Killua balks. "You call that _clean_?"

 

Yup, he's definitely smirking there. He can see it in the bastard's shit-colored ( _chocolate-brown_ , the more eloquent part of himself insists) eyes— Gon hadn't missed a single thing, be it the way Killua had gaped, open-mouthed, at his deliberately slow display, gaze not leaving Gon's lips even once, or the painfully discreet way in which he'd shifted around in his seat earlier.

 

_Well, fuck that. And fuck him, too._

 

Killua retrieves the spoon, but instead of going back to his neglected chocolate sundae (melted cream has begun dribbling morosely down the sides), he clamps down on it, lips smacking together to make a sound that's borderline erotic.

 

"You taste gross," he comments airily, waving the offending utensil around in the other's face.

 

Gon's eyes widen to the size of saucers.

  
  


**if i tell you secrets will you give them away**

 

With the approach of nightfall, not only does the urge to do strange things like sharing indirect kisses via dessert spoons appear, but also one that drives even the most carefully sewn shut of mouths to spill dusty revelations that have never seen the light of day.

 

"I'm a collector," Killua starts out of the blue, though Gon hasn't really asked. "I search for things; trinkets, rarities, experiences, memories."

 

"Why?" Gon's eyes are glued to the screen, comically-bright colors coruscating as characters dressed in elaborate costume flash in and out of the camera's view.

 

The beginnings of a bright, buoyant nursery rhyme fade out into the rhythmic tapping of water crystals on glass, and Killua draws the blanket tighter around his shoulders. It's colder than he'd like it to be; despite how harmless it'd looked at first two weeks straight of showers has had a much larger effect on them all than expected.

 

"There's someone in my life more important than myself, who can't be here to see and touch and hear and learn these things herself. So I'll live through them for her— any experience she might have want of, I'll take it, and share them all with her one day."

 

Perhaps it's the cold, or the fact that midnight passed with their inhibitions forever ago, or maybe it's both, because the next thing he knows Gon's shoulder is leaning into his (or is _he_ leaning into Gon?). Killua doesn't notice this until Gon scoots visibly closer as if the first nudge is a wordless invitation, the soft cotton of his shirt brushing against his arm. Warmth spreads from the point of contact like liquid gold, and Killua lets out a small sigh of contentment.

 

“That’s amazing,” Gon says softly.

 

Killua purses his lips. “No, it’s the least I can do.”

 

"You just haven't realized it 'cos you've been doing it all along."

 

"That's bullshit, and you know it."

 

"Nah." Gon hums. "You're a good person, I can feel it."

 

At this Killua barks out a dry laugh. It disappears into the natural ambivalence of the moonless night, settles like dust particles on the rooftops of their heads.

 

"I'm a lot of things, but _good_ is not one of them."

 

The television screen fades to black, and a few seconds later the ending credits start their simple tumbling sequence in a neat vertical line cutting through its center. Killua ghosts his hand along the underside of Gon's jaw, nudging him along until they're face to face, nose to nose, mouth to mouth.

 

"It's my fault everything ended up like this in the first place, you know?" He looks Gon square in the eye.

 

 _Whatever it is, I'm sure it's not entirely_ your _fault_ , Gon wants to say. But he doesn't— instead he keeps the words trapped safely in his mouth, lets them drag razor sharp claws down his throat.

  
  


**if i kiss you harder will it make you stay**

 

There is something, Killua thinks faintly, quite profound about the way Gon's eyes fixate on his while he does the thing, that one special _Gon_ thing with his hands, palms burning with desire trapped carefully in a pressure-cooker, searing across every inch of skin they can find. Arching his back into the contact, a cold cultivated over weeks juxtaposed with red-hot flames finds its way past the ladder rungs of his ribcage and sublimes his heart. Killua hisses, threads his fingers through locks of midnight cropped short.

 

(Gon freezes. "Did I— are your wounds—"

 

"It's got nothing to do with my wounds, you _idiot_ ," Killua flushes bright red, covering his face with the back of his hand in embarrassment. Gon merely stares at him in wide-eyed confusion, so he grits his teeth and forces the words out. "Keep going.")

 

There is also something rather unsettling about the dull drizzle outside the window, which neither have been able to make out since night fell along with their hopes and dreams— it's truly well on its way to earning aeonian status, having not let up even once since the day they first met. Back then it had seemed like a scene out of a chick lit drama, tragic romance-type novella; now it is a cloud of unease curling at the corners of Killua's vision. Not that it matters much. Nothing really matters right now, the only exception being the sensation of Gon's tongue licking around the shell of his ear.

 

Killua lets slip a low groan, and Gon drops back down immediately, feathers his mouth up Killua's throat, tracing along the delicate curve of his Adam's Apple as the other swallows soundlessly (for the most part), melting into his touch.

 

"Killua," he murmurs against his jawline. The word holds more weight than it usually does.

 

"Mmm?" Killua's eyelashes flutter, catching white gold in the warm yellow lights overhead, and his hands come to a stop in the wild tangle of the other's hair.

 

Eyes drooping just enough to make Killua's heart catch in his chest, Gon leans in and kisses him with a slow, heated intensity that makes his toes curl. His hands are steady and warm on Killua's bare shoulders, thumbs unconsciously rubbing small circles into the moon-pale skin stretched taut over lean muscle and sharp bone.

 

"Will you tell your important person about this too?" Playfully, he nips at Killua's bottom lip with gentle, tugging motions.

 

Killua laughs breathlessly into the slant of space between their mouths, shaking his head. "Even _I_ can be selfish sometimes." As he speaks he rolls his hips into the other's to emphasize his point. The lazy movement drags a heady moan out of Gon's parted lips; Killua catches it between his teeth, whittles it down into a sigh.

 

Taking a shaky breath, he slides his hands languidly up Gon's shirt, dancing a pianist's fingers across the flat planes of his stomach and seeking out the hard lines of his chest further up. "So what’s it gonna be?” His lips curl into a smirk against Gon’s.

 

"Oh, I don't know," Gon replies teasingly, trying hopelessly to hide the hitch in his words. "Got any ideas? I'm all ears."

 

In one swift motion Killua yanks the other's shirt off (now they are both topless, he observes, and Gon is the most beautiful person he has ever seen—), and a beat later his hands are at the waist of Gon's jeans, deftly working at the zipper. "Wanna fuck?"

 

“Are you sure you can handle it?" Gon asks wryly.

 

Killua presses forward in his lap, forehead resting on his shoulder. He takes slow, careful breaths, makes sure Gon can make out every sharp inhale and exhale that fans out across his chest like they are his own.

 

He's smiling, too, but Gon doesn't know that. It's terribly unfair how much the bastard can make him smile. So Killua pulls his hands away and brings his mouth to his ear instead.

 

"Are you sure your shitty old sofa can handle _us_?"

  
  


**i will hold you to your word, and yours, only**

 

The booth situated in the furthest corner of the nearby McDonald's is smaller than the rest, lit with flaky white lights that swing and shudder with every beat of rain shattering against glass. Around the pair strangers swirl like snowflakes buoyed along by chilly winter drafts, flitting from booth to booth to toilet to counter to exit to entrance, and back again.

 

Today Gon is sipping at a paper cup of mango juice; Killua sports a (lone) hot milo, which he cradles carefully between his palms.

 

Today, as well, they have occupied the same narrow booth since late afternoon, when bars of sunlight sloping down their backs washed over everything with shades of honeycomb and marigold. But the heralding of the hours has dipped the gold flecks back out of their eyes, and now their faces are illuminated in sharp contrasts. Gon looks unnaturally pale, Killua notes, while he decides that he might as well renounce his own identity as human and begin going by 'ghost' instead.

 

As the hours slid by their conversation had been waning and waxing like a moon phase pressed into a photocopier, each burst of speech quick and clerical and oddly disjointed, as if both had been aware of the strange fragility which the other had been moving with all day.

 

Presently it looks as though Gon is going to drown himself in the fiddly little cup before saying another word, so Killua takes the bait. Sips at his milo, feeling the warmth scald going down his throat, shoves his hands in his trouser pockets to give himself something to do.

 

"I've gotta go," he says quietly. The words are a titular weight off his chest; now they are thunderclouds hanging over the two like a dark, ominous shadow that won't go away.

 

"To the next town?" Gon asks perfectly normally, glancing up from the bottom of his cup.

 

A short nod. "I wasn't supposed to stay in one place for more than a few days to begin with." Killua watches Gon's face fall like an April shower, and it strikes him just how innocent and guileless this teenager on the cusp of adulthood really is, how fragile and brittle those bones are despite the strength they command. "Still, I don't regret it," Killua adds a trifle sentimentally (and holy shit because he's growing _old_ , he's not even older than Gon, he thinks, yet right now he feels the centuries weighing down on his limbs like rocks).

 

"I'm glad." The smile that bursts into color on Gon's face carves Killua's heart right out of his chest and leaves it flailing pathetically on the tiled white floor.

 

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_ —

 

Gon sifts his hand over his. "When will you leave?"

 

Ducking to break eye contact but not pulling his hand away, Killua shrugs. "Dunno. Soon, though."

 

"Hmm. Where're you going next?"

 

Shrug, shrug, evade. "Dunno 'bout that either."

 

"Oh."

 

_Is it over yet have I said enough yet can I cut the strings pull the connection break (t)his—_

 

"Can I search for you?"

 

In that moment there are over a thousand things Gon could have said, of which the two most cliche would have most certainly been _don't go_ and _fuck you and your cold lifeless soul_. By and large, Killua had not considered a third, likelier possibility.

 

It's the only one that's not bitter and burnt and excluded from the image of formless bed sheets and tiny boys and starry, empty-eyed pursuits he had projected onto the next few weeks.

"What about..." He's momentarily distracted when Gon brushes his thumb gently over his knuckles. "—ahem, university?"

 

"I'll figure something out."

 

Killua decides that he'll come back personally to murder Gon if he doesn't.

 

Some time later Gon falls asleep (maybe twenty-four hour movie marathons weren't as good an idea as they'd thought), so Killua slings an arm over his shoulder and half-carries, half-drags him out the back exit. On the way back he pauses by a clump of hydrangea bushes, tilting his face to the sky to catch slivers of moonlight. The moon is silky white milk pudding rippling like carelessly alighted words between silvery whorls of cloud; in its periphery darkness eats hungrily into the light without reason or rhyme, searching for an antidote to an unending thirst.

 

"Ah," he breathes. It's stopped raining.

 

"Gon, Gon, _look_ ," Killua exclaims in a whisper of a shout, shaking him insistently. "It's not raining anymore."

 

"Uuuuuh," comes the garbled reply. And then: silence.

 

Killua suddenly finds this all quite hilarious, and dissolves into hyena-like laughter. "This is fucking ridiculous," he coughs out between fits of giggles. "We're not in some shitty young adult novel, for fuck's sake."

 

"Keep raining!" He yells at the sky, voice going hoarse around the edges. "Go on, you bloody tease!"

 

Still delirious, still weightless, he presses his lips to Gon's under a sprawl of admiral blue dotted with stars, smiling breathlessly when he feels the other boy's hand snakes around to the nape of his neck, fingers settling like a scatter of summer leaves on porcelain skin.

 

"It's telling you goodbye," Gon says wondrously. Killua laughs, nestles his face into the crook of Gon's neck, links his arms around the small of his back.

 

"Hopeless romantic," Killua accuses him softly.

 

Above their heads a shooting star freewheels past flurries of asterisms into empty, infinite space.

  
  


**because waiting is the one thing i do best**

 

Sometimes even birds with broken wings can fly again.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> me: has not kissed anyone or even touched someone's face before  
> me: ah yes let's write erotic spoon licking and implied sexytimes this is the perfect writing exercize  
> fic: is awkward as hell and a fuckin trainwreck
> 
> if u want to fight me or talk about fic and hxh and gays my tamble and twitter are both @ corpsentry  
> thank you for readin!! you're cool buddy. if you liked it leave a kudo or a comment or don't, whatever floats ur boat, flaps your jack, kicks your dick, ill stop now!  
> have a good one
> 
> p.s. if u want here's all the bolded lines tgt cos they actually make this super bullshit poem:
> 
> there is a rainstorm in your eyes  
> but no one can breathe underwater  
> and i am hiding with the other button-eyed children  
> buried in wastelands of glitter and dust  
> if i tell you secrets will you give them away  
> if i kiss you harder will it make you stay  
> i will hold you to your word, and yours, only  
> because waiting is the one thing i do best


End file.
